My Mother's Abortion

Early in my ministry as a pastor, my mother told me she’d had an abortion. It was for medical reasons, but it had haunted her down the corridors of her mind. She knew better than most people what was involved back then because she had taught obstetrical nursing at Vanderbilt University. 

My brother was born in 1939, and in between him and me, she had conceived a little girl whom she and my father named “Nancy.” Their family physician and fellow Presbyterian, Dr. Bill Evans, advised her to let him take little Nancy before she was born—that’s how they knew that the baby was a little girl.